I uncap my pen and start again, in an elaborate hand:
Lida, 4 July 1943
Letter 7
My dearest E!
Thank you for the honey. Such memories! ‘And yet, how much he says who utters “night”, for from this word deep grief and meaning pour, like heavy honey from the honeycomb.’
Damn it! I drum my fingers on the desk, remove my spectacles and draw my hands across my face, jump to my feet and go to the window. Falkowska Street is festooned with bunting, lined with flags at this end, where the road veers off towards Minsk. Manfred has had a grandstand erected opposite, in front of the yellow and white railway station from the Tsarist days, columns and capitals in operetta style. Three men drag cables, rigging up the loudspeaker system, while the orchestra sits perspiring in their chairs, the brass of their instruments gleaming in their laps. Perhaps Manfred hopes the Obergruppenführer’s wife, the actress, will do a turn. A truck appears and the guard of honour spill out, in black parade uniforms with red and white emblems. I open the window. The heat, the dust and the noise smother me in an instant. But Manfred is nowhere to be seen.
I call for my adjutant. Wäspli appears immediately, his stout figure constrained by tight uniform. I wonder if his letters to his fiancée are as poorly lyrical as my own. Or perhaps he is already married? I know nothing about him. He flutters his fat, bustling hands.
‘Has Hauptsturmführer Breker’s transfer come through yet?’ I ask.
‘I think so.’
‘Think?’
‘My friend said—’
‘Find out,’ I say.
We stand for a moment, in spite of the matter’s conclusion. I make a vague gesture and he withdraws. I return to my desk, open the bottom drawer and produce the Hungarian cognac and a small glass.
I telephone Manfred again.
I picture it ringing in his empty office in the hospital on the road to Vilnius.
Still no answer.
I curse.
_ _ _
Wäspli returns.
‘Yes?’ I demand.
‘He said the papers are being processed …’
‘But did he know?’
He smiles nervously.
No.
When he closes the door behind him I remove the portrait of the Führer from the wall behind the desk and turn the combination, open the safe, take the report on the killing of Feigl from the folder, repeat the case number to myself, then place the report back, underneath Eline’s letters. I take out the bundle and smell the ribbon. It smells of musty papers.
I close the safe and rehang the portrait.
I type the case number, the main particulars, and assign the new report the same number as the one in the box behind me: LZ 512–A.
I leave out Breker.
I leave out the witness, Finckelstein.
I conclude:
Whether Jozef Feigl was the victim of an accident or a premeditated act cannot be ascertained. However, since no evidence has been found to indicate an internal dispute between Jews, the case is deemed not to be encompassed by sections 211 or 212 of the German Penal Code.
Case closed.
H.H. Oberleutnant d.P., Lida District
My right hand trembles as I stub out my cigarette and snatch the paper from the carriage.
I cross over to the window. The sky is full of dust, a haze.
I curse.
Again.
_ _ _
This is Belorussia, the Lida ghetto, case number LZ 512–A, – GHETTO LIDA/A. Feigl:
SS-Hauptsturmführer Sigmund Kindler has charge of the ghetto workshops. He claims his share, though is by no means greedy: six per cent of the intake, before the entries are made in the books. He protects a Jew who makes little birds from wood shavings: Feigl. Kindler sends them to his children in Kiel as Christmas decorations. They are fine and delicate, miracles of life. Feigl looks like a bird himself. There is some measure of contact between them. He brings gifts for Feigl’s wife, small items that can be turned into capital. Feigl is accorded privileges. They make him vulnerable. He bears the mark of Kindler. SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinz Breker works outside the ghetto. He is a friend of Manfred’s. They are boisterous, fond of hunting the hare – by which they mean partisans – and throw raucous parties, with excessive amounts of champagne. Kindler gets drunk and calls Breker’s wife a Bavarian whore. Breker threatens to shoot him like a dog, a suitable end for a Holsteiner such as him. He draws his P38, bellowing and frothing from his fat mouth, exposing the gap between his front teeth. Others intervene. The two of them square off like a pair of bulls, same size, same rage, same rank: equals. Breker puts a bullet through Feigl one night when Feigl is with his birds. Kindler demands a police investigation. I am the police.
The legalities are fiendishly complex, and yet brutally straightforward. The German Penal Code applies within both the Reich and the occupied territories. But if the perpetrator is German and the victim Jewish or local, the provisions of sections 211 and 212 concerning murder and manslaughter do not apply. If both perpetrator and victim are of the same racial value – German–German, Jew–Jew, Russian–Russian, Pole–Pole, Pole–Jew, Russian–Pole and various other combinations – then the stipulations do apply. Thus, any matter may potentially be made the object of investigation. I have a witness, Finckelstein, who saw the killing take place. He sat only a metre away, painting wings. Breker stuck his arm through the window and fired his 9mm into the room. His head was almost blown off, Finckelstein stated. Breker must have discharged a whole round into the vertebrae of the scrawny man’s neck. I have the blood-spattered birds in evidence bags. Autopsy is out of the question, but there are six bullets in the workbench and I have a reliable witness. I picked five fragments of bone, Feigl’s, from his throat and hand, tiny shards of organic shrapnel. I end up with two reports.
The truth for Kindler. A lie for Breker.
I don’t know who ranks highest in the real hierarchy.
If I deliver the wrong report, it could destroy me.
I need Manfred.
